Vista: How to replace Notepad

Oh my, it’s been so long since my last post. Since beginning to learn playing the piano about 8 weeks ago, I unknowingly shut down my blogging activities. Well, let’s restart this blog with a small Vista centered post.

I guess most of you will agree, that the integrated Notepad isn’t really the big bang, right? App. 3 years ago Rolandblogged about replacing the standard Notepad with the really nice Notepad2 in Windows XP SP2. Today I will show you how to do that in Windows Vista.

How-To

Notepad.exe resides in two places:

c:windows

c:windowssystem32

You have to replace it at both locations performing the following steps:

Make sure that you are logged in with an Administrator account

Change the owner to the current account or the Administrators group

Right click on notepad.exe

Select Properties

Select Security tab

Click on Advanced

Select Owner tab

Click Edit

Select the current user or the Administrators group in the Change owner to list

Close all dialogs with OK

Set Full control rights to the current account or the Administrators group

Right click on notepad.exe

Select Properties

Select Security tab

Click on Edit

Select the current user or the Administrators group in the Group or user names list

Activate the Full control Checkbox in the Permissions for Administrators list

Close all dialogs with OK

Rename notepad2.exe to notepad.exe and replace the standard notepad.exe by overwriting it

Concerning 1: Didn’t I write that in my post? OK, I wrote about being logged in as administrator, but the procedure is the same.
Concerning 2: Since when is this needed? I didn’t do those actions and I never get this warning message.

Well, that guy’s first step was redundant, but if you just d/l’d notepad2, you need to right click it, hit file properties, and click “unblock” to remove the message. (That guy’s technique removes it completely) Of course, you’d have to do that regardless of whether you wanted to replace notepad or not.